TIME, THE GREAT HALF-OPEN DOOR, THE BLINDING STAR.

No one knew her private matters.

Poetry is a way of being, Blanca Varela used to say. And hers, according to those who were fortunate enough to know her, was discreet, untouched by vanity, and of supreme acuity. Perhaps, like the spider in the poem that longs to touch sorne light that might harden its heart, Blanca might have wished to be different. Someone without the gift of delving into the subconscious with a hooked blade, of finding the ideal word and being a ble of transmitting the complexities of human existence with so much precision and del icacy.

And yet her talent imposed itself like a force of nature, a ble to spill beyond any boundary and slip past even the most unyielding defenses. So, at the risk of suffocating, the words had to break free, choosing, if possible, the most unexpected path. And so, they say, Blanca Varela hid verses in shopping lists, in crumpled napkins, in cigarette packs, in scraps of paper apparently insignificant- that is, on surfaces condemned to oblivion.

She lived in different countries until she settled in a house in Barranco, from where she enjoyed contemplating the immensity of the ocean. She held many jobs, always linked to words, but she let years pass - nearly a decade - between one poetry collection and the next.

No one knew her private matters. Because no one suspected that underneath those hidden words and beneath that desire to go unnoticed, the true fate of an extraordinary woman, a towering poet, was quietly being woven: immortality.

Verónica Ramírez